Hello,

Our bathroom has been redone, and one of the last things to do is to hang a bathroom cabinet. It’s about 600x500mm, so fairly sizeable. In the pack they have provided 50mm screws and wall plugs for a 6mm bit. This fixes a clever plastic bracket to the wall, which can be levelled with cams before the cabinet is hung on to the bracket.

The wall it is going on is plain ceramic tiles over 12mm plasterboard that has been dabbed to the brickwork.

So the question is, can I use the supplied screws and plugs and get a good fix, or should I use something longer and fix to the brickwork behind?

Unless you have plasterboard wall plugs you cannot use them

Even then I would not bother as they are pretty poor as you are putting weight onto plasterboard
i would go through to brick personally as i reckon the plasterboard will just give anyway

Thought as much. Thanks.

Depends on how much gap you’ve got between the plasterboard and brick wall. I prefer to use expander plugs in plasterboard but you need a good half inch between the board and wall. If not I would use a long brick plug that is long enough to go through the board and into the brick enough to make a good fixing.

As always, I would recommend Fischer Universal Plugs.

They work on anything and I’ve never had any problems using them at work and at home for years.

My bathroom cabinets are both held up one these (UX8’s) into plasterboard, and they have been rock solid for 4 years so far.

I would never use the plugs that come supplied with anything in the little bag. They are almost always complete rubbish.

Defo a longer plug and screw, at the very least drill thru to sound brick, then hammer the plug thru the board if you dont have any decent plugs. Those Fischer ones look the biz though and would be perfect.

And +1 for chucking away most plugs that come with things!

As long as your wall has been properly tiled then drill, plug, and screw, into the tiles. Ceramic tiles will easily handle the weight of a bathroom cabinet – it won’t pull the tiles off the wall. You have to make certain the hole that you drill provides a tight fit for the rawlplug though, tight enough for the rawlplug to require gentle tapping in with a hammer.

Use a “spade shaped pointy” glass bit in your drill even if it’s only to do the pilot hole as they are much easier to control (you can enlarge with an ordinary bit) Although for red rawplugs you should only need a 5.5mm bit/hole.

EDIT : Avoid using the hammer action setting on your drill to minimise the risk of cracking your tiles.

EDIT 2 : Don’t push the rawlpug beyond the tile, keep it flush with the tile.

EDIT 3 : RE : “This fixes a clever plastic bracket to the wall, which can be levelled with cams before the cabinet is hung on to the bracket.” I can’t say I’ve seen a system which uses plastic brackets but I doubt very much that the brackets will take particularly large screws, plus brackets for wall units generally have two screws very close together, so fisher fixings and anything which requires large holes is out of the question imo. Screw into the tiles.

If in doubt, use a longer screw. I would be constantly worrying about stuff falling off if I hadn’t used the longest frame fixings I could find to screw everything well into the thermalite blocks my house is made of. Even going so far as to drill out some fixtures to accomodate the longer screws 🙂

Drilling tiles- use a masonry bit on non hammer backward for a few seconds to score then forwards.
I would use longer screws to hit the brick behind, make sure the plugs are pushed past the tile as they will crack if the plug is expanded by the screw.

they will crack if the plug is expanded by the screw.

The top part of the plug is not designed to expand, only the bottom part. As long as the whole plug is used (ie, don’t tap the plug half way in and then cut the protruding section because it won’t go any further in) and the screw isn’t of an excessive diameter, it won’t crack the tile. Number 7 screws with red plugs should be fine.